Gaming Laptops

If you need a really fast laptop for gaming or for video development, that is probably the most exciting field today. Here are some thoughts. The main one being that we are at the turn for notebooks with both the new nVidia Maxwell (GTX 980/970) class graphics processors and the arrival of NVMe and really fast SSDs.
So we are at the turn of the crank where you want the m.2 with at least 2 lanes and hopefully 4 lanes. And then wait for the NVMe to come to SSDs and vertical NANDs.
Most use the quad core i7 4710HQ
Notebookcheck has the best overview of the actual underlying technology. For instance the fastest mobile card right now is a GTX980M in SLI mode. So there are actually two GPUs at work. It’s interesting to see that a GTX970M in SLI is about 30% faster than a single GTX980M. So the SLI is exotic, but pretty cool
(http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-980M.126692.0.html)[GTX 980M]. This is the premier graphics chip and there are only a few laptops now shipping with it including:

  • Asus G751JY-DH71: Intel Core i7 4710HQ, 17.3″, 3.8 kg. This is getting good reviews from Wirecutter and the Cnet. Asus G751JY-T7065D: Intel Core i7 4710HQ, 17.3″, 4.8 kg is heavier and more powerful configuration. It’s cheaper than the MSI but doesn’t look so garish. 9 pounds of delight! There are quite a few configurations, but the $1500 barebones make some sense, so you can put your own SSDs into (think the Plexstor m6e for 2x SATA).
  • MSI GT72-2QE32SR311BW. It has a huge range with the MSI GT72 Dominator. Intel Core i7 4710HQ, 17.3″, 3.8 kg and it comes in a range of ram and disk configurations up to 32GB and 4 m.2 slots (?!!) and a 2.5” SSD slot. And it has 8GB VRAM as well.

If you want a different model you can get a slim and light configuration:

  • Gigabyte P35X v3: Intel Corei74710HQ, 15.6″, 2.5 kg. This one actually looks pretty cool. Has aWQHD display, and ismuch smaller than the other monsters. The main issue is that it doesn’t cool as well since it is small so about 4% slower on CPU benchmarks and 7% slower on graphics benchmarks but it is slim and light
    • HP Omen is a thin and light like the Gigabyte, but uses a slower GTX 860M (although apparently with Maxwell). Still a nice unit particularly with the m.2 slot.

I’m Rich & Co.

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